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pastiche and bunting

I woke up at 7:45 a.m., just in time to drive to the Connemara Meadow Preserve for the First Saturday bird walk. Rodney Thomas led the walk. May is a great month for Summer arrivals and Spring migrants. We saw Indigo Buntings, Painted Buntings, Baltimore Orioles, and a few vireos and warblers. Roughly 16 of us walked for 3 1/2 hours. It's great to have a wildlife sanctuary a ten minute drive from my home. Connemara Meadow was once a farm, but was donated to a conservancy to preserve its open spaces for wildlife. My only quibble is that the bird walkers, being diligent about stopping for birds, brought me only 5,100 steps on my step counter. Had I walked alone at a state park, I would have seen fewer birds but walked 12,000+ steps. Yet the May Connemara walk is always a good one, and I'm richer for the experience.

I dined at Denny's on egg whites, turkey bacon, fresh fruit and a slice of ham. I took Beatrice for a walk, during which she stared longingly at squirrels in trees. Then I created a new song using samples for the Secret Mixter regular event I was assigned Jason Brock's samples, who records on the Mixter as Spinning Merkaba. I used a curious electronic instrument called Noiser 1.0, which alters samples in unpredictable ways. I recorded and edited several Noiser passages, and then edited them in Audacity into a song. I was intrigued by the result, a somewhat unconventional pastiche that nonetheless vaguely resembles a song.

In the early evening, I went to Green Park near my home, where I got some good pictures of a singing male House Finch. Then we headed out to Silver Thai, where I had monsoon rolls with tofu and spicy bah-mee soup. It was a good day.